Teachers on Report Week In Week Out

Sit down! Teachers in our classrooms are under the spotlight more than

ever. What makes a good teacher is someone that can engage with these

young people. We've been given a revealing insight into one of

Wales's worst-performing schools. Absolute silence. We watch the new

head as he tries to turn it around. What percentage of the teachers of

this school would you prefer to see leaving? Can our teachers do better

and how do we raise the standard? Look after yourself. Sometimes

people shouldn't be teachers. Are they on task? I want to get you off

this reform. You've got to be the right person for it. It is not an

easy job. It's school time at St Illtyd's in

Cardiff and head teacher Mike Clinch has already got his hands full.

(BLEEP). Courtney was that you then? Who was it then, Paige? Language can

do with a bit of improvement there, Sir. He's got a big job on, trying

to save a failing school. My first impressions of the school was it

seemed as if the staff had been battered, bruised and pummelled.

Morale was very, very low, pupil discipline wasn't good, as if the

kids had been told they were in a poor school and were behaving

accordingly. What's happened to your shoes? Oh, dear me. The first couple

of weeks were quite difficult, but I saw in the staff and pupils

potential. I thought I could make a positive impression on them. This is

a Roman Catholic high school with about 900 pupils and 55 staff. The

last report by inspectors from Estyn was so bad it was put into special

measures last year. When you have unsatisfactory performance and

unsatisfactory prospects for improvement, it doesn't get any

worse than that. That's the lowest category that Estyn can impose on a

school. Nabil Douirani, who lives in Roath,

takes his daughter, Farah, into school. What do you have today? I've

got ICT first and then maths. Parents had no idea St Illtyd's was

heading into special measures. It was a big surprise for us, to be

honest, a shock, because we didn't expect them to be in such a

situation. We are meet meeting in the school almost twice a term. We

ask how things are progressing, and when we have a chance to talk to Mr

Clinch or anybody from his staff, we tend to ask them and try to find out

if things are progressing. Mike Clinch is head of a successful

school in the Vale of Glamorgan, but he has also been asked to step in as

executive head to rescue St Illtyd's. His first priority:

improving discipline. Get your diaries open, please. Thank you.

Some of these students have been late 40-50 times since last

September. You must be well into the 40s or 50s and this is going to

affect your chances of getting into a college course. Before the

crackdown, some students were missing one in ten lessons and

attendance was dropping. Name please? Typical morning? Yes. In

year ten we have 30 pupils late on really bad days. We can get it down

to ten. You heard some of the comments from the children, the bus

was late, their mum got up late. That's genuine. But there's also a

hard core who don't seem to care they're late. What were you doing

last night, Xbox? I thought so. What game were you playing? Grand theft

two. Children will say they are on BBM until 2 o'clock in the morning.

All of these electronic gadgets have an impact on their arriving on time

and how tired they are during the day. In a week how many times have

you been late? I think I've been late almost every day this week.

Every day? I think so. How are you going to stop it? Go to bed early.

Once you've finished the two elements, you need to write your

script... It's Farah's first lesson. Although discipline has to be dealt

with first, the biggest priority is to improve teachers' performance in

the classroom. You have to have the highest calibre of teacher possible

doing day in day out five times a day in every lesson the best

possible job that they can do. And then everything else follows. Put

your hands behind your head, in through your nose and out through

your mouth. If the children are engaged with lessons that are

well-planned and interactive, everything else will fall into

place. Why doesn't it happen? Because there aren't enough

high-quality teachers across the education system generally. St

llltyd's got a bad report after its last inspection. Performance in

English and Maths at Key Stage 4 went down over the last five years.

Teaching was assessed as unsatisfactory. There are teachers

here that are very good at their job. There are teachers here that

will be good at their job when they are shown a little bit of training

and a few tips. There are teachers here that were good at their jobs

once and somehow have lost their mojo and there's a small number that

will never be good at their job. What percentage? You could count

them on one hand. I've got 55 teachers. So half a dozen, say?

Around about that. The picture across Wales is alarming. According

to Estyn's last annual report, teaching was good or better in only

around half of the 106 secondary schools inspected over the last

three years. It's time for lunch. But not for everyone. Just work. Mr

Fleet is in charge of discipline. These are the persistent offenders,

getting detention. They've gone through the behavioural system,

verbal warning, yellow warning, a red card, lunchtime detention and

they still aren't get the picture. I do almost a double detention. This

is all since the new head's come in. This is not acceptable. There are

some better at dishing out the discipline... Guys, can you stop,

please. You are letting me down. Stop! That's fine, I will deal with

it. No! Unacceptable. Absolute silence! I don't mind if the camera

is there or not, you are not behaving like this. Sorry jasmine.

Many pupils here say that they like the new, tougher regime. With the

new disciplinary system you've got merits and praising and if you don't

get enough you're not allowed on school trips. Is discipline getting

better? Yes. Is that a good thing? Yes. But others say the standard of

teaching is still patchy. Sometimes you learn but others it is like

copying out of a book. Some of our teachers will make us watch the

Simpsons but other teachers give us proper work to do. Those comments

seem to surprise the head. That's something we are hopefully trying to

address. A mountain to climb still then? Yes. But there is some good

teaching here and Mike Clinch was to keen to show us. For each big square

what do you think is the best to go up in? Five? What you look for in a

lesson is for all the students to be engaged in the activity, for the

activity to be challenging and the teacher to have high expectations in

the pupils' learning. What you would look for here is the fact that they

need to know something different, or have developed their thinking or

understand understanding. The way the kids were talking to each other,

it is peer-to-peer learning, but you wouldn't want this activity now to

continue much longer. You would expect teacher to move it forward

quite quickly. OK, there are a lot of thaw are slowly getting you and

you are all trying really hard and not giving up and asking for the

cheat's paper. What did you think of that? That was exactly what was

needed at that time. What did she do? Is she reinforced what they were

doing and moved them on. There were common faults developing among the

kids that the teacher picked up on when moving around, so she pulled

them all together and redefined what was needed in the task. So top marks

for Miss Rice. But the number of secondary schools judged to be

unsatisfactory overall is going up in Wales. Sarah Morgan visits Welsh

schools for Estyn, the independent inspectorate. What do they describe

as unsatisfactory teaching? Unsatisfactory teaching is where we

see teachers who've not planned their sessions well. Teachers who

don't expect much of their children, their expectations aren't high

enough. They don't provide sufficient enough of a challenge for

various groups of pupils. Sometimes they may talk for too long a period

and the children aren't involved or inspired or motivated to learn.

Thank you year 7. Sit down. A disciplinary process aimed at

helping struggling teachers improve is called capability. They are

removed if that fails. Critics say too few teachers aring discipline

Liberal Democrats. We asked every local authority in Wales have been

threatened with or put into capability over the last five years.

The figure was 100. Out of that only four had been dismissed. Several

heads said one union in particular isn't helping matters. We do not

defend incompetent teachers. We hope that everyone in that situation is

treated fairly. We sent a questionnaire to the heads of

secondary schools. Of the 50 who replied, 16 told us the capability

procedure took a year, and 13 that it took twice that. If it has taken

a year, that's because of the way the system has been managed. But

you're part of the system. Well, our role is to make sure, as I've said

before, and I can't say this often enough, the role of the trade union

is to make sure when capability procedures apply to our members they

are applied correctly and fairly. You might be defending week

teachers. If they are poor teachers then that

will show up through the capability process and ultimately, if they

don't measure up, that will lead to dismissal.

It's home-time for the youngsters, but work goes on at St Illtyd's.

Schools in special measures get inspected every term by Estyn, and

if there's no improvement quickly, they can be closed down. So the heat

is on. The marking is overwhelming at times

so we can find an easy way not just for us but for them to react to what

we are doing and they progress themselves.

Here the English department are staying on late to talk about

improving their marking. Trying to make our marking slightly

more people focused, rather than as writing loads in red in our books.

How much time did it take you to Mark? It was no different but more

beneficial. And I think in the future I think it will be less time.

The day isn't over for Mike Clinch either.

We've got polo shirts and sweatshirts. A uniform with tie and

a blazer... Tonight it is the parents for. He's

floating his latest idea to turn the school around.

This is my favourite one. It has got nice piping. It is much smarter. The

idea is this with either blazer for years seven, Yate and year nine.

The head wants to know how the school can improve communication

with parents. The feeling is, it was very bad before he arrived. Farah's

dad Nabil is here. What can we do to push them?

Increasing the number of parents who take an interest in their children's

school is vital. Back at home, Farah's mum Rebecca is

making supper. She believes there's only so much a school can do without

parental support. There must be a boundary that if you cross you are

in trouble. Both at home and in school. We all need to be on the

same wavelength. Then the child will benefit more from the then getting

mixed feelings at home that you can get away with it at school but not

at home and vice versa for top And that's the way these parents feel

too. If they have got no support at home,

why should the school pick up the slack?

Hopefully we will be able to prove this is a better is situation than

people think it is. Is there anything else you would like to

raise? The big wake-up call for Welsh

Education was the PISA ranking in 2010. These international league

tables laid bare how badly many schools have been doing. What's

going to happen with the bivette boys? Last month we caught up with

the minister launching yet another initiative to stop the rot called

Schools Challenge Cymru. Do you agree we haven't been very honest

with ourselves? More honesty is always a good thing.

One of the interesting elements of the PISA results was actually the

questionnaire that went along with the test and that questionnaire

showed that we are very good at congratulating ourselves within the

schools system, sometimes without any evidence to back it up.

?20 million pounds a year is being made available for Wales's 40 worst

schools. The emphasis will be on collaboration - sharing best

teaching practice. It's based on the London Challenge, which has made

that city the best performing region in England.

The quality of teaching and learning will be the central point. This is

all about support, so we could be talking about professional

development or training for daft but it is also about a challenge and

making sure that schools look outwards.

But the London Challenge was launched in 2003-11 years ago!

Have we been sitting on our hands? I have been education minister for

eight months and there has been no sitting on hands.

So what's been going on in London's schools and what would Mike Clinch

make of it? Burlington Danes Academy was one of

London's worst comprehensives. It's gone from special measures to an

outstanding school in six years under the leadership of Sally

Coates. You have brought the rain with you expect -- with you expect

In recent years she's been made a dame and the schools been visited by

politicians and others keen to celebrate its success.

Nearly three quarters of students here are from deprived

backgrounds-that's far more than at St Illtyd's. And 77% of pupils got A

star to C in their GCSEs. An extraordinary turnaround.

Every morning the children line-up. The whole school apart from the

sixth form, complete and utter silence. Every assessment, the

results go up in a public place and the children are ordered one - 180

in every single subject. What is good about that?

It is a public display of learning. A child can come up and check their

homework. The rank order is used to determine

the streams so twice a year they can move class.

There is a relentless focus on academic progress and the

information is public so the students and teachers know how they

are doing all the time. The kids in the red zone are unhappy

they are in the red zone. It empowers children. We don't do

everything the government to tell us to.

All the results of all the teachers are published to everybody else.

When she arrived six years ago the first thing she did was make all

teachers deliver their lesson plans to her a week in advance. And she

took a hard line with her staff. 23 teachers were removed or left -

that's a third of them. I'm interested to find out how you

addressed capability issues with your staff.

I try to identify quickly who they were and my manner is quite

correct. I would call the teacher to my room. I would be sitting over

there and my deputy would be there. Before the teacher, George, would

have sat down, I would say, I have called you to my room because I'm

concerned about lack of capability in the classroom and you have been

identified as inadequate. There is no, "how are you doing? " none of

that chat. I would be clear that things weren't good and I think what

happens is once you start a conversation, it is easy to fudge a

point. Sometimes people shouldn't be teachers or they shouldn't be in

that type of school so your first priority has to be the children.

The problem I have in Wales is that there isn't a reservoir of talent

waiting to get into schools. Is that an issue you have in London?

Not really. It is much easier to recruit in London and one of the

reasons for London's success has been able to recruit young and

dynamic teachers. Some of London's success also comes

down to money. This school is slightly bigger than St Illtyd's but

gets three times as much cash. That allows Dame Sally to spend money

retaining good staff and paying them to do extra: she hasn't had an

outside supply teacher here for six years.

I must say that is the best two hours of instead I have had for a

very long time. What about removing a third of the

staff? That is commendable. She said she had an advantage in London in

that people of teachers available is greater than we would have in Wales.

In fact we've calculated that the teacher vacancy rate in Wales is

more than TWICE what it is England. To help develop his teachers at St

Illtyd's, Mike Clinch is bringing in extra help. Today, Jackie Jarrett,

acting head of St Joseph's Comprehensive, in Newport, is coming

in. I'm going to be working with to

teaching members of staff, observing them teaching and then spending an

hour discussing the teacher skills and behaviours in the lessons.

Chris is a science teacher who's being observed by his colleague Des

Halliday under Jackie's guidance. These children here are not on task,

are they? Know.

And how far into the lesson? We are near the end of the lesson. He

needed to give them clear guidelines. He should have given

them fewer tasks. If you are giving feedback to

Chris... Listen! Listen! Thank you. The way

some of you have behaved in this lesson is pathetic. There are some

people in this room working fantastically hard, trying to

improve and try things out, have a go. The noise level, now... Listen!

Sits down! Don't talk! Just put it in your book.

Expectations of what they are capable of academically is too low

because he hasn't got control of their behaviour. And he can, he can

do it thinking with a few simple things and then he can actually make

this much more challenging and they can move on with their progress.

How it's time for feedback. Is there anything that struck you

about each other's lessons? Anything successful?

I tried to get it on the board, and then the starter...

The Welsh Government wants schools to be more reflective and

self-critical. More classroom observation, more learning from

other schools. We have developed a self evaluative

culture at St Joseph's. Part of that self evaluation is very much one

which involves lesson observations. I think that's something we can

share with St Illtyd's. You used "pathetic" on one occasion.

Sessions like these aren't common in all schools. The NASUWT says it's

not against peer observation, but is concerned about what it calls a

creeping surveillance culture. We surveyed our members and are

moving to a system in Wales and England where our members... It

wasn't lesson observations, it was the surveillance of teachers and

managers watching what people are doing, nit-picking all that time.

You have to be comfortable having colleagues in your class. Classroom

observation and having people in your classroom is a very sensitive

subject for some. I do think it is something schools

should look into doing. With their newly qualified teachers

specifically and a teacher that gets past five or ten years. You need to

get refreshed on different ideas. You haven't done this before?

There is pressure on timetables and all sorts that it is just getting

the opportunity. It is really positive.

Since the PISA results, one of the biggest areas to come under scrutiny

is the quality of leadership at ALL levels. Estyn say only half of Welsh

secondary schools heads inspected recently are good enough, with too

few managing their staff properly. The union says it's not teachers who

should be blamed, it's leadership and government.

I think we got to stop the denigration of the profession, which

started with the former education minister, which seized on the PISA

results from 2010 and said there was a crisis in our classrooms and

complacency. There was not complacency, the teachers had

slithered what they were expected to deliver.

Is it too hard to sack bad teachers?

We need to be in no doubt that whatever it takes, really, if the

end point of our thinking in terms of raising school standards. My

sincere hope is that we will not need to consider those sorts of

measures. And what about Estyn? Teachers and

parents we spoken to say that Estyn is good at telling schools where

they are failing but not exactly how they can improve and the support for

improvement is poor. It isn't the job of Estyn to do that

improvement. We leave them with the commendations to move forward and it

is the school and the governors and the local authority's responsibility

to move that forwards. Back in the school they are having a

rewards Assembly. We will always reward you and praise

you for improving. Here they are emphasising the

positive and students are getting certificates, even getting a school

trip for their efforts. You're off to the Celtic Manor!

Mike Clinch's efforts to turn this school around are already bearing

fruit - attendance, punctuality, behaviour are all better. But he

knows it all hinges on academic results.

I will be judged on what the results are in the summer. That will be the

driving force as to whether the school has improved.

Mike Clinch's time here is limited, so concerned parents are keeping an

open mind about the school's future. I would love him to stay here until

my daughter leaves. This is great now, while he is here,

but none of us know how long he is going to stay and that is what

worries me. Should Farah's parents keep her at

St Illtyd's and send her younger sister there?

Who's going to continue to monitor the school? Check that we don't go

back down. We didn't know about it the first time so there is always

acted in aspect in the back of my mind, what is going to happen when

the inspectors stop inspecting? What is clear is that a lot is

resting on Mike Clinch and his teachers.

Of course you can't stay in special measures forever and you've got to

demonstrate to Estyn you are making progress. But it's not a quick fix.